We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. This website uses cookies that provide targeted advertising and which track your use of this website. By clicking ‘continue’ or by continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time.ContinueFind out more

Definition of Rube Goldberg in English:

Rube Goldberg

adjective

North American

Ingeniously or unnecessarily complicated in design or construction.

‘a Rube Goldberg machine’

‘These macroscopic movements of the tympanum are transmitted through the columella and extracolumella in most sensible tetrapods, or through a Rube Goldberg machine of three weirdly shaped bones in mammals.’

‘She's not a Rube Goldberg machine, but a perpetual-motion one.’

‘The thing was then, and is now, a Rube Goldberg contraption of breathtaking audacity.’

‘Even more impressive is the fact that Kelly has managed to marshal this Rube Goldberg menagerie into a smart, funny lampoon of gung-ho militarism.’

‘Rather than going about things in a straightforward manner, she devises stratagems, the complexities of which are analogous to the workings of a Rube Goldberg project.’

‘I think of a routine in which the cast was in the kitchen, getting ready for a party, and moved food items from one side to another with the goofy precision of a Rube Goldberg device.’

‘With fascination R. watched me rig up this Rube Goldberg device and mount the switch outside the back door.’

‘In emulation of him, they have turned the wagon into a Rube Goldberg plane that takes off, despite King's efforts to stop it.’

‘Spoons, safety pins, little magnifying glasses, plants, and endless bits of junk rise into the air like a Rube Goldberg contraption without the plot.’

‘Inside his head, there once was a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to help him play golf.’

‘The story structure of the film is like the cinematic equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine - a twisting, winding string of coincidences piled one upon another, all leading to a very simple event - a woman meeting a man.’

‘But from a purely pedestrian viewpoint, this seems like a Rube Goldberg response to the simplest of ideas.’

‘So while most conventional dairies resemble a Rube Goldberg concoction of pulleys, levers and treated feed where the animals serve as little more than milk spouts, this company has opted for a more humane and, he believes, healthier approach.’

‘Harnessing the energy of some Rube Goldberg perpetual-motion machine, prancing on those fine filly legs like the winner of the strumpet's marathon, Bette uses her body as an inexhaustible source of sight gags.’

‘I think the polling methodology is a Rube Goldberg contraption that seems conveniently to favor Democratic candidates on a fairly regular basis.’

Origin

1950s: from the name of Reuben Goldberg (1883–1970), an American cartoonist whose illustrations often depicted devices with such a complicated design.